Early Years Pioneers - Loris Malaguzzi

Loris Malaguzzi was born in Correggio, in northern Italy, in 1920 and lived and worked in the region until his death in Reggio Emilia in 1994.

He began training as a teacher in 1939. His philosophy and approach to the education of young children came to the fore at the end of the Second World War. Women who had been involved in the resistance movement against fascist oppression during the war worked together to fight for pre-school education for their children. Their aim was to raise children who could think for themselves so that fascism could never again overpower the country. They saw danger in education that led children to blindly obey.

Malaguzzi felt that the war had devoured his youth, but in the years that followed he achieved much. In 1945, he worked with a group of parents to help build a school and became its first teacher. Malaguzzi said of this period in his life that the town was motivated by ‘mourning and poverty’. Their only assets were ‘an abandoned war tank, a few trucks, and some horses left behind by the retreating Germans’. In 1950, Malaguzzi qualified as an educational psychologist.

In 1967, after pressure from parents, responsibility for the parent-run centres came under municipal control, and in 1994 an organisation now known as Reggio Children was formed. Its aim was to support professional development and research, provide consultancy and disseminate their work through exhibitions and publications.

From a small beginning, Reggio Emilia now has a network of 78 centres catering for children from birth to three (infant-toddler centres) and from three to six years of age (municipal pre-schools) – famous around the world and widely regarded as offering exemplary practice.

What did Malaguzzi achieve?

Perhaps Malaguzzi would regard his most important achievement as the opportunities for generations of children in Reggio Emilia to learn in community-based centres. Fifty years on, parents, staff and the wider community remain involved in the education of their young children.

In addition, the approach led and developed by Malaguzzi has been highly praised by such notable educationalists as Jerome Bruner and Howard Gardner, who suggests that the schools have ‘legendary quality’.

He argues that they are visited by so many from every corner of the globe because they are ‘schools in which the minds, bodies and spirits of young children are treated with utmost seriousness and respect’ while experiencing ‘pleasure, fun, beauty and extensive learning’ (Gardner 2001).

Through travelling exhibitions of children’s work and through publications produced by Reggio Children, Malaguzzi’s practice and philosophy have reached a worldwide audience. Reggio institutes have been set up in many countries – perhaps most notably in Stockholm in Sweden. As in Reggio Emilia, they highlight the creative arts; the involvement of parents and community; and respect for young children’s learning. Education in the early childhood settings of Reggio Emilia is often considered to have challenged widely held beliefs about young children, enabling practitioners everywhere to reflect on their views of children and to increase their understanding of children’s perspectives.

What philosophy underpins Reggio Emilia’s pre-schools?

Loris Malaguzzi is described as the philosopher of the centres and pre-schools of Reggio Emilia. His philosophy has been summed up as ‘the theory of the hundred languages’. In the view of Malaguzzi, education too often relies on one language – verbal language.

Building on the educational theories of Piaget, Vygotsky, Erikson and Dewey, Malaguzzi’s aim was to enable children to construct their understanding of the world through experiences and representation of those experiences in the languages of paint, drama, music, modelling, drawing and so on.

In a much-quoted poem written by Malaguzzi and entitled No Way. The hundred is there, he refers to the child’s hundred ways of playing, listening, marvelling, thinking and speaking. He adds that schooling steals 99 of these.

Key to Malaguzzi’s philosophy are several strands:

• A view of children as strong, powerful learners with rights – not just needs. All children have potential and are by nature communicators and symbol users who must have some say in their learning.
• Families and community as partners in the learning process.
• Educators as researchers using their documentation to guide and nurture children’s learning.
• An emergent curriculum which, unlike a written curriculum, stems entirely from children’s experiences and interests.
• The environment, referred to as the third teacher. Indoor and outdoor experiences are valued, making it possible for children to move, observe and explore – and then to express their ideas.

What is the relevance of Malaguzzi’s work?

Reggio Emilia continues to engage educators around the world. Few approaches are so clearly defined and principled – or in Howard Gardner’s words, ‘Nowhere else in the world is there such a seamless and symbiotic relationship between a school’s progressive philosophy and its practices’ (Gardner 2012).

It is relevant because practitioners in Reggio Emilia have dealt with conflict – with the Catholic Church, with political leaders, with a statutory school system which is much less innovative – while holding fast to their principles. A curriculum that is not fixed enables practitioners to deal with issues imaginatively and reflectively.

Early childhood education in Reggio Emilia is relevant to all of us in a number of practical ways:

• The central importance of family and community within children’s learning.
• The beauty and order of the learning environment and its impact on children’s development and behaviour.
• Making learning visible – not through assessment but through documenting and evaluating observations and conversations.
• The role of the hundred languages or expressive arts in promoting thinking and learning. Ideas are translated from one expressive medium to another.

Critical considerations of Malaguzzi’s work

Although widely copied, the work of Reggio Emilia practitioners can never be reproduced. It is not ‘a recipe nor a method’, but is based on values that ‘can only be lived’ (Moss 2001). The approach developed in a post-war context in a community united in wanting change, despite widespread international interest, is not readily transferred to other contexts or cultures.

Some argue that the approach has failed to tackle gender issues. Others feel that the outside environment is less well developed than the indoors. Whether true or not, the overall town environment plays a large part in children’s learning experiences.

The absence of a written curriculum is said by some to make educators less accountable. This view is countered by those who suggest that the extensive documentation of children’s learning ensures that practice is open to critical scrutiny.

Education in Reggio Emilia

The curriculum emerges from flexible plans which are devised by staff (progettaziones) and outline possibilities for classroom work, staff development and involvement of parents and the community.

The plan is drawn up with the support of a director (pedagogista), who is responsible for the quality of provision, including professional development and relationships with external bodies, parents and communities within a group of schools.

Workshops (or ateliers) are provided in every school and the atelierista ensures that the workshop is well equipped and maintained. He or she will have a background in visual or expressive arts and is responsible for developing creative representation in adults and children. Even the youngest children have access to a stimulating range of resources and are encouraged, in line with the theory of a hundred languages, to express ideas creatively.

All teachers take notes and photographs and record group discussions and play. Teachers and directors review the documentation and use what they learn to plan further activities. Documentation follows learning and is not an assessment or a sample of work but a record of the learning process, which is frequently displayed and used as the basis of discussion about the nature of children’s learning.

You may be envious to learn, as you nibble your sandwich while putting up pictures and work at weekends to keep records up to date, that generous amounts of time are built into the adults’ week to allow for discussion with colleagues, planning and preparation – and even for a relaxed meal time!

MORE INFORMATION

• Edwards C et al (2012) (3rd ed) The Hundred Languages of Children. Praeger
• Reggio Children, https://bit.ly/2Oyhzav
• Sightlines, www.sightlines-initiative.com
• Malaguzzi L ‘History, ideas and basic philosophy’ in Edwards C et al (1993) The Hundred Languages of Children. Ablex
• Gardner H in Making learning visible: Children as individual and group learners (2001). Project Zero/Reggio Children
• Gardner H in Edwards C et al(2012) (3rd ed) The Hundred Languages of Children. Praeger
• Moss P ‘The otherness of Reggio’ in Abbott L and Nutbrown C (2001) (eds) Experiencing Reggio Emilia. OUP